IT Hiring to Expand in Second Quarter

A whopping 75 percent of CIOs surveyed plan to either fill vacant IT positions or expand their existing IT staff in the second quarter, according to a recent Robert Half Technology survey. That bullish outlook is largely driven by 89 percent of CIOs holding a strong to somewhat confident belief that their companies’ growth prospects will be good in the second quarter.

“We continue to see strong demand for IT workers as companies increase their investment in technology initiatives, including security, data mining and mobile,” says John Reed, senior executive director of Robert Half Technology. “Companies are finding it most challenging to recruit technology professionals in specialties such as network administration and database management.”

According to the survey, 16 percent of respondents say it’s challenging to find networking specialists, 13 percent for data and database management and 12 percent for applications development.

If you look at the salaries those companies are willing to pay, and the benefits offered along with the level of experience they demand, you will see why. You can’t get champagne and caviar on a beer budget, unless you are a (and this is not critical of women, but of the business model) “really hot chick”. Let me qualify that expression by stating that I once worked as a bartender, and the best looking women usually drank all night for free. Men rarely got free drinks, and then only when they won a game of pool or darts. If you were moderately attractive, or ugly, you could drink for free after 12 when everyone was drunk. In this respect, the “hot chick” is a company whose name oozes prestige, like Google or Amazon. Companies are trying to get those champagne and caviar people on a beer budget. They could have done it in 2008, when the market was flooded with unemployed talent, but instead they waited and held tight to their purse strings. Now they need to hire people and they still don’t want to pay for it.

My advice, look at the US Department of Labor salary rates for the job you are trying to fill in your area. In a pinch, Salary.com has a great bell curve chart. If your salary is outside the low end of the 60th percentile, you are not likely to find anyone. You can’t eat stock options. Profit sharing doesn’t pay student loans. Promises don’t buy gas and food. And to those readers who have H-1B visas, I can only say you are probably just fooling yourselves by thinking this means more work for you. Sure, you can come to the US, make what for you might be a lot of money for one or two years, but you won’t really get ahead. Much of your salary will get eaten up in taxes, rent, transportation, internet, cell phone, etc. The reason Americans want so much money to work in Pittsburgh is that most of us do the research and know how much it costs to live in Pittsburgh or to commute there. Speaking for myself, I am not against someone taking a job in the US when that person is not a citizen, but I am against them having to put up with a company underpaying them for doing so.

I agree with the poster above. It’s interesting to know that they are having a hard time finding network administrators. I thought it was hardest to find application developers and security specialists, not admins, but this is great news for me. Seems like the demand is in my favor right now, although I am still developing my trade, I do hope to be a network administrator some day.